Ben Carson

In a move that’s been expected for some time, president-elect Trump has nominated Dr. Ben Carson to be his Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs. I see pluses and minuses to this selection. On the plus side, I’m confident that Dr. Carson will act decisively against the “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) regulation promulgated by the Obama HUD. If he does, this “plus” will likely outweigh any »

Donald Trump’s treatment of Ben Carson presents as a kind of case study in his technique. He first treated Caron respectfully. Then he turned on him, drawing on autobiographical passages in Carson’s books to question his veracity and mental balance. When Carson dropped out and endorsed Trump, however, the good times rolled again. Trump speaks kindly of his friend Ben. But all has not been smooth sailing. Carson has had »

When he endorsed Donald Trump, Ben Carson said “there’s two Donald Trumps.” The first is “the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences.” The second is “the Donald Trump behind the scenes.” The two “are not the same person,” Carson explained. “One’s very much an entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual.” At the time, I wrote: The folks who »

Dr. Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump for president. Many conservatives will be disappointed by the doctor’s decision, but it makes sense to me. In effect, one candidate whose quest for the presidency was founded on a cult of personality, not on any demonstrated ability in the realm of public policy or even demonstrated ability to discuss policy in any depth, is endorsing another such candidate. Carson fits the profile »

Last night, Donald Trump repeated his claim that “I’m the only one on the stage that said we should not go into Iraq.” As I’ve pointed out before, however, there is no credible evidence that Trump said any such thing. Trump had plenty to say about the Iraq invasion after it had taken place. In the early days, when it wasn’t going well, he called the invasion a mess. But »

Nebraska attorney David Begley must be nearing the end of his series of reports on appearances of the presidential candidates in Iowa for us; the Iowa caucuses will be held on February 1. Yesterday Dave attended the appearance of Ben Carson Council Bluffs, Iowa. Dave’s report is below: On a cold night less than a week before Christmas, Dr. Ben Carson returned to Council Bluffs. Since is he is now »

The quality of last night’s debate was good overall, I thought. This is a talented field when it comes to debating. Even most of the candidates who were assigned to the undercard are fine debaters. There were, however, several low moments. I’ve already discussed the lowest — Donald Trump saying that the most important component of the (nuclear) triad is the nuclear part. Trump, though, is bullet-proof for the time »

John Sears, Ronald Reagan’s one-time campaign manager, once said “discipline is nine-tenths of politics.” And, as Tevi Troy reminds us: Candidate Reagan put Sears’ dictum into action, running a relentlessly focused communication operation that kept to its message of the day, often to the consternation of the reporters following the campaign. This approach continued into Reagan’s presidency. As the authors of All the President’s Spin put it: “Ronald Reagan’s administration »

A new Quinnipiac poll of likely Iowa caucus-goer shows Ted Cruz surging into a virtual tie for first place with Donald Trump. Cruz comes in at 23 percent, just two points behind Trump. Ben Carson has slipped to 18 percent (from 28 percent in the previous Quinnipiac poll). Marco Rubio is in fourth place at 13 percent. The margin of error is +/-4 points. Cruz is the natural beneficiary of »

Politico claims that Ben Carson is “los[ing] his hold on Iowa’s conservatives: Across the state and at a major gathering of politically active evangelicals on Friday night, foreign policy was top-of-mind for the voters and state lawmakers once considered natural constituents for Carson. But after a week of confused comments from the former neurosurgeon and a dismissive critique by his own advisors, Iowans are now consistently voicing doubt about Carson’s »

Perhaps the most revealing moment in the most recent GOP presidential debate occurred when Trump said in response to criticism from John Kasich, “I’ve built an unbelievable company worth billions and billions of dollars. I don’t have to hear from this man.” “This man,” I suspected, is actually anyone who disagrees with Trump or who stands in his way. Ben Carson occasionally disagrees with Trump — most recently over the »

Last Friday, after reading a Politico story asserting that Ben Carson’s campaign had admitted that its candidate’s story about applying and being admitted to West Point is untrue, and after checking around the web to see if there was push back against the Politico story, I wrote this post (minus the update and parenthetical note in the second paragraph). In the post, I quoted several paragraphs from Politico’s report and »

Ben Carson’s “West Point flap,” as John calls it, made me curious about the veracity of another set of biographical statements by the doctor — his discussion of his relationship, if any, with a company called Mannatech. I had been aware of the controversy over this, but hadn’t looked into it. Mannatech is a supplier of medical supplements. In 2007, then Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit against Mannatech »

This evening in Florida, Ben Carson held a press conference and addressed attacks that have been launched against him by the Democratic Party press. This excerpt, courtesy of CNN, is good. Carson points out that reporters had no interest in stories about Barack Obama that vastly eclipsed the nuances of whether Carson could have attended West Point. In particular, he notes that Obama’s college and law school records are sealed. »

Paul wrote earlier about Politico’s story alleging that Ben Carson has lied about being offered a scholarship to West Point. Since then, Politico has backed off slightly, changing its headline and deleting the word “fabricated” from its story (without noting the deletion). Carson has apparently told the story many times, and it appears in almost identical form in each of his two books. Carson wrote, while relating his experiences in »

I like Ben Carson, though in the race for the GOP nomination he’s far down my preference list. Thus, I was happy to defend him from what struck me as an unfair attack by CNN on his “personal story” (having to do with manifestations of anger as a teenager). But now, the Carson campaign has admitted that the candidate’s story about applying [note, Carson never claimed to have applied] and »

We’ve grown accustomed to the liberal media trying to derail Republican candidates by exposing them as jerks when they were kids. Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush received this treatment. But CNN is taking different line of attack against Dr. Ben Carson. It wants to derail the good doctor by showing that he was a nice boy. Why? Because Carson has said that before he found God, he had a terrible »